Western Standard - November 12, 2025


HANNAFORD： Carney budget to bring inflation, cut debt while you can – expert


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25 minutes

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4,086

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228

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Summary

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In this episode, economist Tim Sargent talks about the impact of the Bank of Canada's 2019-20 budget on the economy and the housing crisis in Canada. He is the Director of Domestic Policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa.

Transcript

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00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.
00:00:21.460 It is Thursday, November 6. To talk about what the Mark Carney budget means to you,
00:00:27.400 I'm pleased to welcome back Dr. Tim Sargent, an economist and the Director of Domestic Policy at the famous McDonnell Laurier Institute in Ottawa.
00:00:36.400 Dr. Sargent, welcome back to the show.
00:00:39.400 Thanks for having me, Nigel.
00:00:41.400 It's a great pleasure.
00:00:42.400 Tim, once upon a time you were a Deputy Minister, you were in the PCO, the Privy Council office, you were in finance,
00:00:48.400 you're used to the salesmanship that goes with these things,
00:00:52.400 so can you strip away the syrupy words and tell us what they just did here with this budget?
00:01:00.400 Happy to, Nigel.
00:01:01.400 And there's a lot of words, it's four and six pages.
00:01:04.400 Even I have trouble going through it and I used to help write them, as you said.
00:01:09.400 The most consequential budget in Canadian recently in history was the 1995 budget, which is less than half the length of this one.
00:01:16.400 So in terms of the budget itself, I mean, there's lots of graphics, lots of political message.
00:01:21.400 But to strip away, I mean, you basically got to ask three questions about what the government is trying to do here.
00:01:27.400 Firstly, are they focusing on the right problem?
00:01:30.400 And I think for many years, certainly over the Trudeau government, they're actually not focusing on the right problems.
00:01:36.400 But I think this budget does.
00:01:38.400 The real problem, we have two problems in Canada.
00:01:40.400 We have a short-term economic problem coming from the Trump administration and its attack on our trade.
00:01:46.400 But then we have a more important long-term problem with productivity in this country,
00:01:52.400 which has been lagging behind the United States for at least a decade.
00:01:56.400 And underneath that is low investment.
00:01:59.400 Like we simply just have not been investing as a country.
00:02:03.400 And here I'm talking about the private sector.
00:02:06.400 So I think the budget recognizes that.
00:02:09.400 It recognizes that these two economic problems are serious and the government needs to address them.
00:02:16.400 The second question you would have is, okay, we've got the right problem.
00:02:20.400 Do we understand what's causing the problem?
00:02:22.400 And, you know, I would say, I think most economists would say that challenge over the last 10 years is government has gotten too big.
00:02:30.400 Immigration is too high. Taxes are too high. There's too much regulation. 0.99
00:02:35.400 I think the budget recognizes some of those problems.
00:02:39.400 You know, there's an attempt to cut the size of government, reducing immigration, something on taxes.
00:02:45.400 You talk about regulation.
00:02:47.400 So I think that they mostly understand the problem, understand what's causing the problem.
00:02:54.400 But the third and most important part of it is, what are you actually going to do to address the problem?
00:02:59.400 And do you have the strength, the willpower, and do you have the right ideas to address those problems?
00:03:05.400 It's all very well to, you know, have a problem, understand the causing.
00:03:09.400 But the main thing is to actually go ahead and deal with the problem.
00:03:12.400 And here, I think, is where the budget really comes up short.
00:03:16.400 I think you have a bunch of half measures.
00:03:18.400 You know, they cut the public sector, but, you know, by nowhere near as much as it's grown over the last few years.
00:03:24.400 They cut taxes, but, you know, not as much as I think that they could.
00:03:30.400 And it's focused at the low end.
00:03:33.400 There's cuts to see corporate income tax, but perhaps not as big as they need to be.
00:03:37.400 Immigration is cut by not as much as it should to be.
00:03:40.400 So there's a bunch of half measures.
00:03:41.400 There's also a fair amount of waffle about the emissions cap.
00:03:45.400 Do we have an emissions cap? Don't we have an emissions cap?
00:03:47.400 It's a bit like Schrodinger's cap right now.
00:03:49.400 It's sort of, we don't really want to open the box and see if it's there or not.
00:03:53.400 Electric vehicle mandate, is that staying or not?
00:03:56.400 Well, they're going to do a review.
00:03:57.400 They're going to tell us a bit more later.
00:03:59.400 And then there's a few areas where I think they're clearly doubling down on the wrong policies.
00:04:05.400 On housing, for instance, it's not government that's going to build the homes to solve the housing crisis.
00:04:11.400 You've got to be cutting regulations, making sure that interest rates aren't too high.
00:04:15.400 If you look at the direction of climate policy overall, I mean, they're still very much focused on 2050 and net zero,
00:04:24.400 want to increase the industrial carbon tax to $170 at a time where a lot of our businesses are going to be struggling,
00:04:32.400 throwing a lot of money at infrastructure.
00:04:35.400 So, you know, if you strip away a lot of the salesmanship, I think that they're trying to get at the problems,
00:04:41.400 but a lot of these solutions, they're either not enough or they're going in the wrong direction.
00:04:46.400 Well, there's a number of things there that are particular interest to our audience.
00:04:53.400 Let's go back first to the emissions cap.
00:04:58.400 I mean, for those people not involved in the oil industry directly, that's a bit of jargon.
00:05:05.400 What it means is that the large oil companies, especially those involved in extracting oil from the oil sands,
00:05:14.400 are being told that they can't emit as much carbon dioxide because of the climate change narrative.
00:05:22.400 And that is a constriction on production.
00:05:26.400 So, to give them their due, the oil companies have got quite creative about how to produce the same amount of oil with less carbon dioxide,
00:05:39.400 even pushing the stuff underground with massive pumps and at incredibly low temperatures.
00:05:44.400 So, carbon sequestration.
00:05:46.400 But even after you've done all that, there is still carbon produced.
00:05:52.400 And so, the issue seems to be that the government in this budget is predicting, is promising,
00:05:59.400 that it will increase the price of carbon that will be charged to the producing companies from $80 now to $170 in about five years' time.
00:06:11.400 My question is, how does that flow out into the marketplace?
00:06:18.400 I don't see how it can fail to mean higher prices for gasoline and other energy products.
00:06:28.400 And then, more generally, does this give the industry a chance to even stay afloat?
00:06:34.400 Because they're producing for export.
00:06:37.400 And this is going to push the price up.
00:06:40.400 Absolutely.
00:06:41.400 And it's a very, very competitive market for oil, for gas, for refined gasoline.
00:06:47.400 What's interesting is, if you look at the budget, the budget actually, the section of the budget that talks about climate,
00:06:54.400 starts out by saying how good our companies are at actually having low emissions and how much progress that they've made.
00:07:02.400 And they compare Canada to many other countries around the world that haven't made the same progress in reducing emissions in the oil and gas sector.
00:07:11.400 So, you could say, well, Canada is so good, why do we need to go further?
00:07:15.400 Why can't we just wait for everybody else to catch up with where we are?
00:07:18.400 But the government, of course, it's intent on squeezing every last carbon dioxide emission out of the Canadian economy.
00:07:28.400 Only in the Western Canadian economy.
00:07:31.400 You can still import all the oil you want from Nigeria or Kazakhstan.
00:07:37.400 And this doesn't apply.
00:07:40.400 That's right.
00:07:41.400 I mean, you know, the world wants high economies.
00:07:43.400 How do they square those things?
00:07:45.400 And of course, at the same time, they want to see more investment.
00:07:48.400 The whole budget is supposedly about incenting private sector investment.
00:07:51.400 And oil and gas sector is a huge investor in the Canadian economy.
00:07:56.400 So, unfortunately, what this is going to do, if they're serious about it, is it's just going to make further oil and gas investment in the Canadian economy uneconomic.
00:08:08.400 Private sector investors have lots of places to put their money around the world, including in places that have very high emissions in their oil and gas sectors.
00:08:18.400 But international investors really don't care about that.
00:08:21.400 And one thing that we've seen over the last few years is that even just over the last years, they've stopped pretending to care.
00:08:28.400 You've seen the whole ESG, environmental, social and governance movement, which is designed to put pressure on companies and financial institutions to not invest in so-called dirty industries.
00:08:43.400 That has really ground to a halt.
00:08:45.400 So investors right now, they're being very hard nosed and they won't buy your money for that dollar.
00:08:50.400 And that dollar won't come to Canada if the conditions aren't right.
00:08:54.400 Well, it seems when you were saying, I mean, it's very obvious from the big numbers that have been committed to what they describe as investment.
00:09:03.400 I mean, the number of $115 billion was given out for infrastructure.
00:09:08.400 Well, what's the infrastructure going to be?
00:09:11.400 It doesn't seem like there's going to be much need for pipelines.
00:09:15.400 But in any case, this is all government investment.
00:09:19.400 It seems to me that that is probably if you wanted to build an economy, the last people you would want doing it would be the government.
00:09:27.400 You would want to attract private capital.
00:09:29.400 And 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, we were attracting it like crazy.
00:09:36.400 It's gone away.
00:09:38.400 So is there actually, do you think, reading between the lines as much as you can, do you think that this government actually has a comfort with being in charge of the economy?
00:09:53.400 And rather than just being a keeper of the rules, actually wants to run things.
00:10:00.400 I think that's right.
00:10:02.400 You do?
00:10:03.400 Because if I'm right, I'm scared.
00:10:06.400 Because they see the problem and, you know, it's great to have smart people at the top of government.
00:10:12.400 Mark Carney is very smart.
00:10:13.400 I've worked with him, for him, been across the table for him.
00:10:18.400 The challenge with being very smart, though, is that you think that every problem has a solution and that you need to be that solution.
00:10:25.400 And the reality is, however smart you are, the real way to get investment is not for somebody at the top of government, however smart, to say, well, we need to invest here or we need to invest there.
00:10:35.400 You know, you don't have all of the information needed for that.
00:10:38.400 It's not, you know, you're not the actual person on the ground who knows what market demand is, knows what the costs are, and has that market discipline that forces you to make correct economic decisions.
00:10:51.400 Governments can afford to indulge themselves and often end up investing in things that, you know, the private sector doesn't want to invest in, but for good reason.
00:11:02.400 Because they actually don't make any economic sense.
00:11:05.400 You can see this on housing as a good example.
00:11:08.400 We're going to be spending billions of dollars to build a very small number of houses, because when the government builds things, it's always a lot more expensive.
00:11:18.400 The government's not very good at getting value for money for its dollar, because it's not the government's dollars, ultimately taxpayers' dollars.
00:11:25.400 But when it's an individual, when it's a company, it's their dollars, or they're responsible to their shareholders, and they will actually make much better decisions than government.
00:11:34.400 Well, you know, you're making it sound, and I think perhaps you intend to make it sound like a technocrat's budget.
00:11:42.400 And, of course, that is one of the frequent criticisms of Mr. Carney, that he is slightly less than human, and therefore a technocrat.
00:11:55.400 It's an unkind thing to say, but, you know, he doesn't do well on personality.
00:12:01.400 So, the thing is, I'm looking through this budget, and I confess I haven't gone all through 493 pages, but I look through the budget, and I go out, and I think, well, who is this really trying to please?
00:12:13.400 Well, if I was a liberal, what would I look at in there and say, ah, that is going to be good for me, and he gets my vote.
00:12:23.400 What do you think that is, what is there there that you could actually go out and sell to your liberal voter base?
00:12:32.400 I mean, there's not a lot there. I mean, if you are, let's say, a Trudeau liberal, which probably means actually in your heart an NDPer, just an NDPer likes to be in government.
00:12:44.400 You know, there's not a lot there, and in many ways, they're going in the opposite direction from the Trudeau government.
00:12:50.400 You know, the cuts to the public sector, maybe not as big as some economists would like to see, but they're definitely there.
00:12:58.400 The emissions caps in question, the EV policy is in question.
00:13:03.400 You know, we're seeing cuts to immigration, significant cuts.
00:13:07.400 I mean, there's definitely some more spending there. As I say, there's on housing, there's on infrastructure.
00:13:13.400 There's $5 billion, for instance, that's going to be spent on building hospitals.
00:13:17.400 Now, you know, I like hospitals as much as the next person, but I don't think it's the federal government's job to build hospitals.
00:13:24.400 That's why we have provincial governments. But, you know, if you're a liberal, you often, liberals tend to care less about what the federal provincial division of powers should be and are always keen for the federal government to interfere in areas of provincial competence.
00:13:39.400 So, you do have some of these, you know, nice little spending items, but it's certainly not the same as we've seen in some previous liberal budgets.
00:13:50.400 Yeah. Well, and so I'm wondering if, in my own mind, whether I can honestly portray this as the whole thing as an extension of federal government involvement and control in the Canadian economy overall.
00:14:08.400 Is that a fair assessment?
00:14:12.400 I think that's right. I think they're trying to catalyze investment, as they put it, across a whole series of sectors, including areas where, you know, we should really see the provinces take the lead.
00:14:25.400 I mean, natural resources is a good example where, I mean, really, they should be pulling back and allowing the provinces to manage their natural resources and decide what appropriate emissions cuts are, for instance.
00:14:38.400 And that's basically what the constitution says. It should be provinces that manage the natural resources and provinces to decide what infrastructure they need.
00:14:48.400 Now, if it crosses a provincial boundary, that means you need pipeline, then yes, the federal government should step in.
00:14:55.400 But of course, we're not actually seeing anything really in this budget about pipelines.
00:15:00.400 They stay away from that particular infrastructure investment, even though they want to double exports to the rest of the world.
00:15:07.400 Well, I don't see how you can do that without exporting more oil and gas, particularly over the rockets to the Pacific Ocean.
00:15:15.400 OK, just to be the devil's advocate for a moment, if I were a liberal flack wanting to present this in the most attractive way that I could, I'd build the argument something like this.
00:15:29.400 The global markets might give this a passing grade because strong for investment, trade and stability.
00:15:37.400 And we're sending a clear signal that we have ambitious capital incentives, bold infrastructure plans, pragmatic resource strategy, strategy.
00:15:49.400 Did I say tragedy?
00:15:51.400 It all sets the tone as the country pivots to compete both in North America and beyond.
00:15:56.400 And not all debt is bad.
00:15:58.400 Sometimes if you put it to good use, then debt is the right thing to do.
00:16:03.400 If I were to write that, would you grudgingly endorse it or would you come back and say, no, no, no, you clearly missed the point?
00:16:14.400 Look, I mean, there's some of that in there.
00:16:18.400 The problem is they're trying to have that cake and eat it in many ways.
00:16:22.400 They're trying to have, yes, we've got some corporate tax incentives like expensing or manufacturing and processing, for instance.
00:16:29.400 But we also want to spend more and increase the deficit.
00:16:34.400 We also want to put money into housing and infrastructure.
00:16:39.400 So which is it?
00:16:40.400 Is this a making government smaller budget or is it a making government bigger budget?
00:16:44.400 At the end of the day, if we look at what's happening with spending, if we look at the deficit, which is going to stay around 2% of GDP for the foreseeable future.
00:16:53.400 You see debt charges going up, debt charges, that's the cost of the nation's credit card.
00:16:59.400 It's going up 40%, 4-0% over the next five years, reaching around 70 billion, 7-0 billion.
00:17:06.400 I mean, that's a lot of money.
00:17:08.400 So you're saying that our annual debt charges that the federal government will pay to the people who lend it money are going to $70 billion.
00:17:18.400 What are they today?
00:17:20.400 That would be about $40 or $50 billion.
00:17:24.400 So almost, not quite half as much again, but getting that way.
00:17:29.400 Yeah, exactly.
00:17:31.400 Well, you know, one of the things that as a conservative opinion writer, we tend to keep coming back to say is that government borrowing is inflationary.
00:17:42.400 And certainly, we've seen outright increase in borrowing for the next, well, actually, they're not ever forecasting a balanced budget now.
00:17:58.400 There used to be a time when they say, give us three or four years to amuse ourselves, and then we'll get back to a balanced budget.
00:18:05.400 Well, now, I think this year's deficit is going to be $78 billion.
00:18:11.400 They will borrow that.
00:18:12.400 Next year is, I think I'm right, $65 billion, which they will then go to the market for.
00:18:18.400 And $50 billion, another $50 billion.
00:18:22.400 A couple of things about that.
00:18:24.400 One is that Mr. Carney, when he was campaigning before the last election, actually said he would go out and do that.
00:18:32.400 He said he would borrow nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars.
00:18:36.400 Well, now he is planning to do that.
00:18:39.400 And I just, I'm rather struck, generally speaking, you don't campaign and go out and say you're going to get yourself into horrible debt.
00:18:48.400 So, did he have this in mind all along?
00:18:52.400 Well, I think he is very bought into the argument, yes, that if you, you know, there's good spending and bad spending.
00:19:01.400 Good spending is investment spending and bad spending is current spending, if you'd like.
00:19:06.400 The question is, and I don't think economists would disagree with that.
00:19:10.400 The question is, is where you draw that line.
00:19:12.400 And the problem is, government starts saying, rather than spending good, and all kinds of things suddenly become investment,
00:19:19.400 where all you really do is subsidizing industries or writing checks for municipalities to build community centers or high-speed rail networks that we don't necessarily need.
00:19:30.400 It's a very, very slippery slope.
00:19:34.400 And the politics will always push you into wanting to spend more and more.
00:19:40.400 And therefore, you're just going to try and run as much as you can under that investment banner.
00:19:45.400 And those, those governments that have tried to, you know, use this investment, you know, this capital, but interpreting capital budgeting from, from operating and trying to deal with them separately.
00:19:55.400 Um, as happened in Alberta, of course, under, when I was in Redford was premier, it's happened in the UK.
00:20:01.400 They've, they've always gone into trouble and financial markets will always look through that.
00:20:05.400 Well, what financial markets care about is what you said.
00:20:08.400 It's how much money does the government have to borrow?
00:20:10.400 And from an economic perspective, that's, those are resources that are, can't be used in the rest of the economy.
00:20:16.400 So that's, that's the government taking money away from the rest of the economy from Canadians and saying, instead of letting you spend that,
00:20:22.400 we're going to take that through taxes, or we're going to borrow it, um, in this case.
00:20:26.400 And, you know, that's money that isn't available for other things.
00:20:30.400 And what that can do, as you say, is it can, purchase of demand in the economy and that can, can push up prices.
00:20:36.400 Well, you say it's not, that money is not available for other things.
00:20:41.400 And of course you're absolutely right.
00:20:42.400 When the government is borrowing money, I, I believe I'm correct in saying that makes it more expensive for the private sector to borrow.
00:20:51.400 Because somebody got there first, so now they have to pay a premium to, to get, to get what they need.
00:20:58.400 Um, that's right.
00:20:59.400 If you want to.
00:21:00.400 Yep.
00:21:01.400 If that is the case, what does that mean?
00:21:05.400 And here I want to really get particular about what this budget means for ordinary Canadians who probably haven't paid as much attention to the details of it as you have.
00:21:16.400 Um, we've already talked about increasing the price of carbon to the producers, which cannot fail to translate into higher energy prices for the, for the user.
00:21:30.400 And now we're talking about the government borrowing money, forcing up the interest rates as it does so.
00:21:37.400 What advice would you give to that mythical ordinary Canadian, um, about how he can prepare himself for a new round of inflation and high interest?
00:21:50.400 Well, I think, uh, you know, we're seeing governments around the world borrowing more, um, that's pushing up interest rates.
00:21:59.400 Um, and that's, that's your signal to, to look at how much debt you're carrying, pay down that debt.
00:22:05.400 Um, and just not be borrowing, borrow less and save more, um, because governments are doing the opposite.
00:22:11.400 You know, I, I, I'd like to be as fair as it could be to any government that is working in our favor.
00:22:21.400 Um, the key to all of this heavy spending, however, is going to be effective implementation.
00:22:30.400 Uh, they seem great at setting up funds and agencies to do great things.
00:22:38.400 Your opinion, two opinions, actually.
00:22:41.400 One, do they actually have the nose to do it?
00:22:44.400 And secondly, if you were grading this budget, like a teacher grades the essay, where, where would you put, where would you put it?
00:22:52.400 Well, I think the challenge for them is it, it's not enough to have just a couple of smart people, very smart people at the top of government.
00:22:59.400 Um, it's not even enough to bring in a couple of people from, from the private sector, which they've done with the major projects office with a couple of other institutions that they've, that they've set up.
00:23:09.400 Um, that's doesn't help if the, if the rest of the government machine just doesn't work very well.
00:23:15.400 And what we've seen over the last few years is that government machine atrophy and not be able to do basic things like getting passports to Canadians on time, for instance, or asking their tax questions.
00:23:25.400 So the reality is you've got this machine that doesn't, that's, that's creaky.
00:23:30.400 It doesn't work well.
00:23:31.400 And it actually, you know, to make it would work well, it takes several years of, you know, swapping out senior managers, changing how you do things, improving performance, getting rid of poor performers.
00:23:42.400 So I don't think you've got the right machine to, you know, to implement this agenda at the speed that they want to, to implement it.
00:23:51.400 Um, and so, you know, the other, the other challenge is, you know, a lot of this, you need to go a lot further on, um, getting the government out of the way so that the private sector can actually produce prosperity because only the private sector can do that reliably.
00:24:06.400 So, you know, in terms of grading the budget, um, you know, I applaud, I applaud the, the ambition.
00:24:14.400 Um, but I'm not sure that they're doing all of the things that they need to, to do.
00:24:18.400 So, uh, I think, and I'm not the only one, I think he would come to this conclusion.
00:24:23.400 You know, I think we're probably looking at a C is it, it's not a fail, but it's not the VA that the country needs at this moment.
00:24:29.400 All right.
00:24:30.400 Well, there's a lot of consensus around that.
00:24:33.400 So just to repeat that last, uh, bit of, uh, of advice that if you can do it, reduce your debt and, uh, and, uh, brace yourself for another round of inflation because it's on its way.
00:24:46.400 Dr. Sargent, thank you very much for coming on the program.
00:24:50.400 Great insights as always.
00:24:52.400 And, uh, we may be seeing more of you in the near future as this thing unfolds.
00:24:58.400 Thank you for being here.
00:25:00.400 Thank you.
00:25:01.400 For the Western Standard.
00:25:02.400 I'm Nigel Hannaford.